Ramon Durano marries Beatriz Duterte
Credit to Author: RACHEL A.G. REYES, TMT| Date: Mon, 25 Mar 2019 16:31:10 +0000
“POLITICS,” Ramon Durano (1905-1988) once said, “is not something you can entrust to non-relatives.” The Cebuano patriarch and ruthless warlord lived by his word. Since the mid-1950s, Danao, a relatively wealthy and populous coastal municipality about 30 kilometers north of Cebu City, has remained under the tight control of a single family — the Duranos.
In An Anarchy of Families (ed. Alfred W. McCoy, 1994), the American historian Michael Cullinane offers a richly detailed and compelling account of the Durano family of Danao. Ramon Durano is described as a “contradictory figure.” On the one hand, Ramon projected himself as a modest, unpretentious, devoutly Christian family man and patron. People easily warmed to his authentic folksy provinciano ways. He was affectionately called “Manong Amon,” and his favorite song, “I’ll Be Loving You, Always,” was a hit with the crowds.
Ramon’s opponents knew him differently. He had a callous and fearsome reputation. He was known to operate by brutal intimidation, assassination and corruption. Ramon enforced his will using an army of frightening gun-toting goons, who later expanded into killer vigilante squads. Ramon ran Danao City like a private family enterprise. Every family member occupied a government post. He was congressman for Cebu’s first district from 1949 to 1972. His son has held the seat since 1987. Danao’s mayorship has been successively in the hands of his wife and children.
Politics was always inextricably linked to an array of lucrative businesses, both legal and illegal. Family holdings included everything – coal mining, gun-making, shipping and illicit smuggling, real estate (accumulated initially and largely by land grabbing), provincial banking, cement-making, sugar-milling, even the bakeries, as Ramon himself would add with a contented grin. All the family’s assets flowed from winning elections, while business profits were plowed into elections to retain the family’s political power and dominance. The family bought votes for themselves, and sold them to the highest bidder.
Historians are unclear precisely when Ramon married Beatriz. A date posited by Cullinane is 1931. Beatriz’s father was Severo Buot Duterte who was involved in politics and had run for the Danao City mayorship before the war. Although Ramon’s marriage was a politically significant match and produced seven children, Beatriz’s father opposed the relationship and the pair had to keep their affair secret for some time, at least until the birth of their first child.
As Ramon’s wife, Beatriz proved to be a capable and astute political asset. Backed by her husband, she successfully ran for the Danao City mayorship in 1955 and retained the seat until 1971, bringing the city directly under Durano family control. In subsequent decades, the mayorship, vice mayorship and city councilor, remained interchangeable positions between the mother and her children. By 1988, observes Cullinane, Ramon, his wife and their children had participated in 19 elections and campaigned for over 30 political offices. In 1987, Ramon reportedly paid P7 million to “buy practically everyone in Danao.”
Beatriz acquired votes more subtly. She had once worked as a public schoolteacher and continued to maintain links with the women in that profession. Schoolteachers were traditionally entrusted to supervise the polling places, guard the ballot boxes, tally the votes and report election results. Made well aware of Beatriz’s role in hiring, firing and promotion, of the benefits of being loyal to the Durano family, and the cost of betrayal, the women schoolteachers proved to be malleable at election time.
Beatriz’s decade-and-a-half mayorship of Danao was not all she did. She was also president and chair of the family’s cement-making corporation, the Danao City Development Bank, managing director of the Durano interisland shipping company, and what amounts to being CEO of the Durano business empire. She groomed all her children to hold positions in the family businesses that swelled to encompass the manufacture of electrical wire and cables, ice plants and telephone systems, insurance and paper. Ramon called his empire an “industrial complex.” The family extracted their wealth directly from the city’s revenues and indirectly from public service contracts. As Cullinane writes, “like a private hacienda, the family managed every aspect of the life of Danao City, treating the residents as tenants or dependents and subjecting them to their patron-like power.”
Over the weekend, Sara Duterte and the HnP roadshow were in Cebu and Danao City. She knows it pays to campaign hard here. Cebu province has over 3 million voters. In 2016, the area delivered over a million votes to her father. Cebu is a kingmaker. Mindanaoans claim the presidential daughter and Davao city mayor Sara as their own. But HnP politicking in Cebu was styled as Sara’s homecoming. The press reported the important link — President Duterte’s father is Vicente who was once mayor of Danao. It doesn’t matter if it was only for a brief period. Peddling the connection is enough.
But the Cebuano roots of the Duterte family go far deeper. Severo Duterte, the father of Beatriz, is the brother of Facundo Duterte. Facundo is the father of Vicente, who is, of course, Sara’s grandfather.
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